Greetings From Rome
posted by Dave Hoffman
Hi folks! As I mentioned here, I’m in Rome at Temple’s Summer Program for the month of June. It has been lovely so far, with nary a sight of the caldo tremendo (heat wave) Italian newspapers had been promising.
What with class prep, touring, and writing I’ve been a bit unable to blog. However, I thought I’d share one story that Mike’s post on beer versus wine brought to mind.
A colleague stopped by a wine store in the city center yesterday, and saw that the storekeeper was dispensing red and white wine from spigots on the wall. The wine was likely the source of a many local restaurants’ house stock. The cost: .75 Euros for a litre, but you had to bring your own container. My colleague brought her own container, a water bottle of unremarkable provenience. She had bought it at a nearby store for 1 Euro. Did I mention the wine was very good?
(Picture credit: I took the picture above while walking on the road to the Roman forum on Italy’s Republic Day, which is why the colosseum is draped in bunting.)
June 7, 2007 at 8:50 am
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law
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Responses (2)
Antiquated Tory - June 8, 2007 at 6:16 am
Excellent! My wife and I visited Rome in the beginning of May and loved it. It might have propelled itself to favorite city status.
As for wine vs. beer, I think I agree with you, if I understand you correctly, that it is entirely situational. We live in the Czech Republic where there is very good lager beer on tap for a Euro or less for half a litre. We don’t bother buying bottled beer in the store, though it would be much cheaper. On the other hand, we now almost never drink lager in any other country. In Rome we only drank red wine, because it was very good and inexpensive and Czech red is lousy. In Belgium we only drank Trappists, a few Abbeyes and the occasional De Koninck to wash it down, though if we’d eaten anywhere fancy we probably would have sampled the typically excellent stock of French wine. In the UK it’s real ale except in wine bars, in the US it’s microbrews unless we get to California sometime. Etc.
Mike O'Shea - June 8, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Ah, the Czech Republic! The nation with the highest per capita beer consumption in the world, and rightly so. Roast pork, dumplings, cabbage and Czech beer… sublimity is not the only ideal to which food & drink may aspire.
I almost included a spiel about the Czechs’ status as world beer champs in my beer/wine post. I’d like to visit someday. I love the sound of the language and tried to teach it to myself in college. Total failure.
But back to Rome. Many of us in Oklahoma wish we could buy good red wine for $1.00 a liter. Have fun, Dave.
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